Submitted by Richard on Tue, 05/12/2009 - 9:35pm.
I took the following from the Change to Win site, thought to post here as well:
Speaking today to our brothers and sisters at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Vice President Joe Biden laid out why passing the Employee Free Choice Act is so important:
Vice President Joe Biden, making a renewed pitch for a major change in labor law, told union leaders Tuesday that the best way to rebuild the middle class is to help labor unions grow.
Biden said it’s time to “level the playing field” for unions by passing a bill that would make it easier for workers to organize.
“You’ve got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it’s just out of whack,” Biden told a conference of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has about 1.6 million members.
“If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get,” Biden said…
Biden pointed out the difference between public sector employees, where 37 percent belong to unions, compared to the private sector, where just 7.5 percent of workers carry union cards. He said federal, state and municipal employees face fewer barriers to organization, while managers in the private sector use “every trick in the book” to undermine unions.
Biden said he and President Barack Obama would not consider their economic recovery efforts a success unless growth creates “good, sustainable, livable jobs in the process.” A key element, he said, is rebuilding the American labor movement, which has steadily declined since the 1950s.
“We will not consider it a success unless the middle class is growing, taking a piece of that productivity,” Biden said.
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There's going to be some changes to the proposed legislation
Arlen Specter's jump to the Democrats has shaken the issue up. He had supported cloture for the bill the first few times it came up and he backed away when he saw he was going to lose his primary battle against Pat Toomey, who is no friend of working people. But, Specter has made a few statements that give the impression that things may be moving along. Barbara Boxer is talking of having the card check provision changed slightly by having the NLRB certifying the results if 50%+1 of the employees mail in their cards to the NLRB directly. The anti-worker groups who oppose employees having the freedom to choose a union had done some effective propaganda saying that the EFCA was going to take away the right to a secret ballot (it did no such thing). So the direct mailing basically takes away much of the propaganda of the U.s. Chamber of Commerce and National "Right to Work" group.